One of the goals of the BYOT class is for each member to develop a faith statement. We’re following some of the same guidelines that UU youth do as they develop their own personal faith statements at about the age of 13 but these are good questions for all of us to ask and to seek answers to. It will take me several posts to get through the questions.
1. What do you believe about spiritual life, religion, church?
Those are three separate questions!
I like the explanation that spiritual life is our own internal experience of the divine. Hopefully, it makes us realize that we are both precious to God as well as small and finite. I rely on my spiritual life to help me maintain a sense of humility about my place in my family, my community, and the wider world. I rely on my relationship with God to help me feel like there’s a purpose to my life. Some days that purpose is to fulfill my role in my family and my workplace. Sometimes it’s to help a friend in need. Sometimes it’s to help out in my community.
I believe that religion is the organized seeking of God. Some people would say that religion is more about power and control over people but I don’t. I think it’s simply people of like minds seeking God’s grace through community and companionship. Over-all the concept of religion is not a negative one for me.
And finally, to me church is a small group of people of like minds who come together to seek out community. Before my experience with the UUs I would have said that they came together to seek God, or the divine, or even to worship God, but now I realize that not all churches have that as their purpose.
2. What is important to you about being a Unitarian Universalist? Which of the seven principles and purposes are important to you and why?
First off, I’m not a UU and at this point don’t think I will become one. Of the seven principles the one that’s most important to me, the one that I need the most, is “Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations.”
I believe that both the atheism as well as the anthropological leanings of my parents helps me in this one. I honestly don’t feel that any one faith is better than any other and I’m happy to help others on their journey and hope that they can respect and help me on mine.
3. Do you believe in God, or a supreme being, or a force directing the universe?
Here’s where I feel very old-fashioned and perhaps not very creative but I believe in God as a supreme being with knowledge and power over all things. I believe that He has the ability to intercede in the least of human affairs but that for the most part human free will is the deciding factor for how human beings interact. I believe that God set the world in motion and that evolution played out according to His design. I believe that God is the force behind the natural world, as well as its creator, but that nature essentially runs itself: tides, fires, mountain ranges forming and wearing down. God created this beauty and is responsible for every sunrise and sunset but the world turns on the timetable that He set up eons ago.
4. What holidays and holy days do you celebrate and what do they mean to you?
I celebrate Christmas as a cultural holiday. I look forward to it all winter and it’s a time of celebration with family and friends for feasting, relaxing and gift giving. I fast during Ramadan. There aren’t a lot of other holidays that I actively recognize. Although this year I got a terrible hankering for chocolate covered marshmallows around Easter which I remember fondly from the baskets of my childhood. Normally I can’t eat those any longer because typical marshmallows contain gelatin which is a pork product. So, Betsie and I ordered halal marshmallows, dipped them in dark chocolate and then dipped the tips in white chocolate, covered them in sprinkles and took them into work. They were a hit.
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